It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.

Senate Chaplain Uses Fort Hood Shootings To Promote His Religion

Yesterday, Barry C. Black, the government-paid Chaplain of the United States Senate, stood before the Senate and introduced the day with the following statement:

” Eternal Lord God, Creator and Sustainer of humanity, as we continue to try to understand the tragedy at Fort Hood, our hearts ache for the victims, so we turn toward You, our source of hope…”

Have the members of the United States Senate all turned toward God because of the shootings at Fort Hood? Is God their source of hope finding solutions to violent rampages?

Did Chaplain Black even ask the members of the Senate what their reactions and philosophical positions on issues of violence and religion in relation to the Fort Hood incident are? I doubt that he had conversations with all 100 senators to see whether they were turning to his Christian God for hope. Of course, some members of the Senate aren’t even Christian.

Yet, Black made the presumption that he could get up and make declarations about the religious thoughts of the United States Senate. That is, after all, what he’s paid to do, though it’s a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Chaplain Black did what many preachers do when there’s a disaster. They use the disaster as an opportunity to sell their religion. If there really is a God, and Black really wanted to make a prayer to God, Black didn’t need to tell God what was on the minds of the senators. God is supposed to be omniscient, so he would already know that.

No, Chaplain Black wasn’t really making a prayer so much as he was making a speech – about how people should turn to his God and his religion when confronted with nasty things in life. Black was using the violence in Fort Hood as an opportunity to gain some attention for his religious beliefs in front of some of the most politically powerful people in the nation.

That’s tacky. Chaplain Black wasn’t consoling anybody. He was using a multiple murder to continue to push the idea that the USA could become a Christian theocracy, beseeching his deity to control the thoughts of the US senators before him, to “imbue their minds with Your vision of what we can become when we seek first to do Your will.”

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